Athletics and Indian Athletes: Events and Facts

The correct answer is A, Javelin throw. Neeraj Chopra won the men's javelin throw at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which were held in 2021, and that medal was India's first Olympic gold in athletics and its first individual gold since shooting in 2008. He went on to take the world title at Budapest in 2023.

Option B, badminton, is wrong because India's badminton medals at the Games have been a silver and bronzes, not a gold, and none of them belongs to Chopra. Option C, tennis, is wrong because India has won only a bronze in tennis at the Olympics, in 1996, and Chopra is not a tennis player. Option D, weight lifting, is wrong because Mirabai Chanu won a silver in weightlifting at the same Tokyo Games, which is why the option looks tempting to a candidate who remembers only the Games and not the event. Chopra is a thrower, and his event is the javelin.

The correct answer is B, 42.195 km. A marathon is run over 42.195 kilometres, which is exactly 26 miles and 385 yards. The odd figure was fixed at the London Olympics of 1908, when the course was extended to finish in front of the royal box, and it became the official distance a few years later.

Option A, 40 km, is close to the distance of the earliest marathons of the 1890s but is not the standard today. Option C, 45 km, matches no athletics event at all. Option D, 50 km, was for many years the longer of the two Olympic race-walking distances, which is why it appears here as a distractor, but walking and the marathon are separate events. A half marathon, worth remembering with this, is 21.0975 kilometres, and the marathon is a road event, not a track event.

The correct answer is B, Milkha Singh. He earned the name in Pakistan after beating the home favourite at a meet in Lahore, and it stayed with him. He finished fourth in the 400 metres final at the 1960 Rome Olympics, won the 440 yards gold at the 1958 Cardiff Commonwealth Games and took two golds at the 1958 Asian Games.

Option A, Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, was a fine hurdler who came fifth in the 110 metres hurdles final at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but he carried no such nickname. Option C, Sriram Singh, reached the 800 metres final at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and long held the national record in that event. Option D, Joginder Singh, is not an athlete remembered under that title. Learn the pair of nicknames together: Milkha Singh is the Flying Sikh and P. T. Usha the Payyoli Express.

The correct answer is B, Payyoli Express. P. T. Usha comes from Payyoli in the Kozhikode district of Kerala, and her speed on the track earned her the name of her village. At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics she finished fourth in the 400 metres hurdles, missing the bronze by one hundredth of a second, and at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games she won four golds and a silver.

Option A, Dhing Express, belongs to Hima Das of Dhing in Assam, who won the 400 metres at the 2018 World Under-20 Championships. Option C is a loose description, not the nickname papers use. Option D, Udan Pari, or flying fairy, is a name associated with the sprinter Dutee Chand in press reports and not with Usha. Since two of the four options are genuine athletics nicknames, the question turns on knowing which village goes with which runner.

The correct answer is C, ten. The word decathlon is built from the Greek deca, meaning ten, and athlon, meaning contest. It is a men's combined event held over two days, and its ten disciplines take in sprints, hurdles, the middle-distance 1500 metres, jumps and throws. Points are awarded by a fixed table and the highest total wins.

Option A, seven, is the number of events in the heptathlon, the women's combined event, and is the commonest wrong answer because the two are always taught together. Option B, eight, matches no combined event in athletics. Option D, twelve, is likewise not a recognised total. A third combined event worth noting is the pentathlon, with five events, which survives in the modern pentathlon and in indoor competition. Count the Greek prefix and the answer follows at once.

The correct answer is C, 3000 metres. The Olympic steeplechase is a 3000-metre race in which runners clear solid barriers and a water jump on every lap. Over the full distance an athlete takes twenty-eight barrier jumps and seven water jumps, and the barrier before the water jump is fixed and does not tip over.

Option A, 1500 metres, is a flat middle-distance race called the metric mile and has no barriers. Option B, 2000 metres, is the distance of the junior steeplechase in some meets and so is a plausible trap, but the senior championship event is 3000 metres. Option D, 5000 metres, is a flat long-distance track race. Remember that the steeplechase is the only Olympic track race with a water jump, and that both men and women now contest it over the same 3000 metres.

The correct answer is B, Anju Bobby George. She took the bronze in the long jump at the 2003 World Championships at Paris, and that was the first medal India won at a senior World Athletics Championships. Her best jump of 6.83 metres, set at Athens in 2004, stood as the national mark for many years.

Option A, P. T. Usha, won a mountain of Asian medals and came fourth at the 1984 Olympics, but she never stood on a World Championships podium. Option C, Neeraj Chopra, won the world title in 2023 and a silver in 2022, both two decades after Anju's bronze, so he is not the first. Option D, Hima Das, won her 400 metres gold at the World Under-20 Championships in 2018, which is a junior meet and a different competition from the senior Worlds. The word first, and the word senior, decide this question.

The correct answer is C, 800 grams. The rules fix the men's javelin at a minimum of 800 grams with a length of about 2.6 to 2.7 metres, while the women's javelin weighs 600 grams and is shorter. A throw counts only if the metal tip strikes the ground first and the athlete stays behind the arc.

Option A, 600 grams, is the weight of the women's javelin and is the trap the question is built around. Option B, 700 grams, is not a competition weight in athletics at all. Option D, 1 kilogram, is the weight of the women's discus, so it belongs to a different event. Keep the four throwing weights in one line: shot put 7.26 kilograms for men and 4 for women, discus 2 kilograms and 1, hammer 7.26 kilograms and 4, javelin 800 grams and 600.

The correct answer is B, Monaco. The body was founded in 1912 as the International Amateur Athletic Federation, became the International Association of Athletics Federations, and was renamed World Athletics in 2019. Its offices are in Monaco, and it fixes the rules, ratifies world records and organises the World Athletics Championships, first held at Helsinki in 1983.

Option A, Lausanne in Switzerland, is the seat of the International Olympic Committee, which is a different organisation and the commonest confusion in this question. Option C, Zurich, hosts the headquarters of FIFA, the world football body, and a famous annual athletics meet, but not World Athletics itself. Option D, Paris, is the city where the body was founded at a meeting of national federations and where the 2003 World Championships were held, which makes it a well-placed distractor.

The correct answer is B, 400 metres. Milkha Singh reached the 400 metres final at Rome in 1960 and finished fourth in a race so close that the first four all broke the existing Olympic mark. His time stood as the Indian national record for close to four decades, and the near miss is the single most quoted moment in Indian athletics before 2021.

Option A, 200 metres, was an event he ran and won at the 1958 Asian Games, but not the Rome final in question. Option C, 800 metres, is the event in which Sriram Singh reached an Olympic final, at Montreal in 1976. Option D, 110 metres hurdles, is where Gurbachan Singh Randhawa finished fifth at Tokyo in 1964, another famous fourth-or-fifth place that papers deliberately mix with this one. Tie the three together: Milkha 1960, Randhawa 1964, Sriram 1976.

The correct answer is C, triple jump. Field events are those in which an athlete jumps or throws rather than races, and the triple jump, with its hop, step and jump, is measured for distance in a sand pit. The other field events are the long jump, high jump, pole vault, shot put, discus, hammer and javelin.

Option A, the 110 metres hurdles, is a track event: it is a race over ten hurdles in lanes. Option B, the 4 x 400 metres relay, is also a track event, run by four athletes who pass a baton within a 30-metre take-over zone. Option D, the 3000 metres steeplechase, is a track race over barriers and a water jump, and its obstacles tempt candidates into calling it a field event. If the athlete is timed against a clock it is a track event; if the result is a distance or a height, it is a field event.

The correct answer is C, 400 metres. Hima Das, who comes from Dhing in Assam and is called the Dhing Express, won the women's 400 metres at the World Under-20 Championships held at Tampere in Finland in 2018. She became the first Indian to win a gold medal in a track event at a world championship of any age group.

Option A, 100 metres, is a sprint she has run at domestic meets but not the race of that gold medal. Option B, 200 metres, is the event in which she has also competed and won Asian-level relay and individual honours, so it reads plausibly. Option D, long jump, is a field event and belongs to the Anju Bobby George line of Indian achievements rather than to Hima Das. The pairing to remember is Hima Das with the 400 metres flat and P. T. Usha with the 400 metres hurdles.